New City Sets Up Today

Rancho Santa Margaritans have no catchy city motto to call their own, no colorful city seal to splash across police cars and important documents. Their City Hall is but a sparsely furnished suite in an office park.

But it’s a city hall. And it’s theirs. It’s tangible proof of Rancho Santa Margarita residents’ years-long quest to become a city.

Voters sanctified cityhood by a wide margin in November. And today, while many of the community’s 40,000 residents sit glued to the Rose Parade on TV or recover from New Year’s Eve festivities, it becomes official.

In fact, the five members of the Rancho Santa Margarita City Council will spend a chunk of the holiday today in their first official meeting.

Within the space of a half-hour or so, Debra H. Lewis, Carol Gamble, James M. Thor, Gary Thompson and Neil C. Blais will be sworn in and then approve a flurry of items that make a city a city. A fancier ceremony is slated for Jan. 20.

Already, the council has tapped a handful of interim city workers and taken care of many of the details that make any municipality run--from choosing a computer system to arranging a line of credit from the county to getting a telephone for residents’ gripes and suggestions.

“I had four things on my must-do list: Get an interim city manager and interim city attorney, find office space and line up insurance,” Lewis said this week. “Those were the first absolutes that had to be done by the first.”

And all have been accomplished in less than two months.

“It’s been exciting and, at the same time, a little intimidating,” Lewis added. “Picking insurance was a little intimidating--comparing eight different policies, all of which were a little different.”

Feeling overlooked by the county, the residents of this master-planned community nestled in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains waged a five-year battle to become Orange County’s 33rd city.

The “gang of five” that now sits on the council helped lead the cityhood campaign, vowing to increase police protection, build an intergenerational community center and better spend local tax dollars.

“We’re ready to go,” Thompson said. “We made a commitment to the community--the five of us on the City Council--that we would have the doors open on Jan. 1, and we will meet that goal. If anyone wants to call City Hall on Jan. 3, the first business day, there will be someone there to hear their concerns.”

It’ll be a live person, no less. The new city is so far shunning automated telephone answering systems.

Already, Interim City Manager William O. Talley, who has also steered Mission Viejo and Dana Point through the baby steps of cityhood, is talking with the county to arrange more sheriff’s patrols.

He also helped the council rent space in Suite 101 of an office park at 30211 Avenida de las Banderas--leading the fledgling city staff to joke that the Orange County municipality with the longest name also holds claim to the longest mailing address.

The county has taken several actions to ease Rancho Santa Margarita’s transition to self-governance--extending a $50,000 line of credit, because the first tax dollars aren’t expected to trickle in until February.

The county is also extending police protection for the first two fiscal years and providing road-related services for the first full fiscal year.

Under a state law requiring new cities to reimburse counties for lost future revenue, Rancho Santa Margarita will pay Orange County $12 million over the next decade.

Right now, all interim employees--the city manager and his assistant, the financial officer, the city attorney, the deputy city clerk, the planner and the office assistant--are all consultants. Permanent employees will be hired when the city gets a better fix on its estimated $7.4-million general-fund budget.

Residents might not notice an immediate difference in their community, Talley said. The changes will develop over time.

“What’s going to be different about Rancho Santa Margarita” is that local residents “are in charge of their own destiny,” Talley said.

“If they want better police service and can afford it, they can get it. If they want a service in the city instead of in Santa Ana, they can get it. If they want improvements such as the intergenerational community center, they can build it.”

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A City Is Born

Today marks Rancho Santa Margarita’s first official day as a city. Voters gave overwhelming approval to cityhood in November balloting, when they also tapped five City Council members.

Rancho Facts

Population: 40,000

Estimated budget: $7.4 million

City Hall address: 30211 Avenida de las Banderas, Suite 101

City Hall phone: (949) 635-7950

Source: LAFCO, city.